BIDDEFORD — The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine has taken disciplinary action against a Biddeford physician it says demonstrated incompetence by not being fully aware of the hazards associated with medications he was prescribing to a patient who died of a drug overdose.

Dr. Stephen H. Doane, who practices internal medicine in Biddeford, has had his medical license put on probation following a recent Board hearing in Augusta.

During his probation, which spans the remainder of his licensure, Doane can only oversee one mid-level practitioner at a time and no more than 200 beds in a maximum of two facilities. He cannot write a prescription that lasts more than seven days for any patients leaving a facility he works at. And lastly, he must communicate with a practice monitor who will review all cases in which he writes prescriptions of controlled substances lasting more than a week.

Doane was also fined $12,000 in costs incurred by the Board in executing the investigation.

The investigation and subsequent ruling resulted from a series of incidents concerning a female patient Doane treated from 2003-12. Over the years, he prescribed her several controlled substances, according to Board of Licensure documents.

Board documents state that starting in 2010 and lasting until her death in 2012, the patient was taken to the emergency room a handful of times for overdosing on medications, and on more than one occasion she was given the drug Narcan, which improved her condition each time, suggesting she was overdosing on the opiates Doane was giving to her.

In May 2012 the patient died from overdosing on oxycodone and cyclobenzaprine, according to Board documents; Doane had prescribed both of those drugs to her in the form of Percocet and Flexeril, respectively.

Doane was previously subject to a Board investigation in 2011.

According to documents from that investigation, in September 2011, the Board reviewed information it received from the Biddeford Police Department expressing concerns over Doane’s prescriptions to eight patients, including one who died in January 2011.

In the wake of a 2012 hearing following that investigation, less severe prescribing restrictions were imposed on Doane.

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].